Hacker News Reader

Comment by Eueudhsbsj32 | Hacker News Reader

Yes, it is. I don't want to live in a country where everything is illegal but not enforced (until someone in power dislikes you).

View on HN

With the approximately zero quality of current administrations the difference between "legitimate" and "legal" has become bewildering and well beyond damaging.

Read the under 16 ban in Australia as ideally their presence on certain social media platforms as being against the law. Parents though very much like the ones that let their under age kids drive on roads despite illegal, will trust those in their judgement will probably be safe, while being able to enforce restrictions of their child if they feel it's robbing their kid of time, self respect or other.

The difference with the ban is unlike back in 2019 when social media were ignoring requests (too hard etc) to remove some of the bad algorithms that were targeting and funnelling teenagers into dark topic areas ... with the change it's on social media to ... well remove targeting algorithms that focus on the 10 to 14 year olds for a start ... else if anything bad outcomes happens - the law I'd imagine will throw the book at them. It also works the other way as well, parents who knowingly permitted their child to engage, won't be rushing off to their lawyers to sue whomever.

The main issue with the ban has been where some people would like to use the under 16 ban as an excuse to do age verification by the most intrusive means as possible - but I could only imagine it only benefits platforms scraping as much PII as they can get.

Content shouldn't target 10 to 14 year olds, sure. But, in practice and mathematically/statistically, I'm not sure what that means. Even if algorithms ignored age completely, there would be statistical correlates.

We should probably ban algorithms suggesting content and ads for dark things for everyone i.e. cigarettes, alcohol, gambling, misleading health content. It is honestly bad for everyone and that's actually the only way to prevent kids from seeing it.

It's not just about ban evasion. It's also about kids seeing this content everywhere.

Yes banning ads for misleading health scams would be a good idea, but banning ads for for those who smoke or drink vying for more market share probably isn't purposeful. I'd agree one of the problems of the modern world are young minds are too often introduced far too early to concepts and behaviours they'd cope with better as young adults, but the world has changed and even in everyday life these are in view one way or another.

As for targeting ... I wish I could find the news item from what I think was around 2018-9 that in particular made me sit up and realise the dissatisfaction with wayward algorithms wasn't merely advertising that was not entirely suitable. IIRC this article after the initial introduction of various incidents where the parents had discovered their child had ended up visiting odd places like self harm topics and content not so desirable, the article then outlined someone or a group of people testing various social media areas with new fake accounts. The damming conclusion was just how quickly the algorithms were determining an age and then funnelling apparently somewhat naive youngsters without much prompting into unexpected topic areas, while the fake accounts which suggested an adult experienced something different.

A search today didn't turn up anything close to what was the real concern I believe that got everyone's real attention here in Australia 2018/19, mostly just benign issues like gambling, advertising for alcohol and other marketing opportunities. [1] [2] [4] [5] The govt at the time did ask the platforms to modify what they were doing but the short answer was too hard and not going to do it.

Muddying the waters are long running calls to control platforms by a few interested parties with concerns, some opting to capitalise any time a particular platform faces criticism. Some of these are legitimate long standing problems like [3] where platforms are expected to have live human moderation keeping a watchful eye over their flock at all time ... while ignoring the platforms are generally trying to balance safety with an expectation of privacy. It's these very things that some apparently very powerful parties use to try and bring an and to anonymous content on the web - every time there's an issue trying to install a real ID gateway - many assume the age gateway will do that.

[1] https://www.news.com.au/technology/online/social/leaked-docu... (2017)

[2] https://www.ibtimes.co.uk/facebook-targeting-insecure-childr... (2017)

[3] https://www.forbes.com/sites/zakdoffman/2019/03/01/surge-of-... (2019)

[4] https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/oct/09/children-... (2019)

[5] https://insightplus.mja.com.au/2020/48/under-the-radar-preda... (2020)

The problem is might see the solution is to not have such laws in the first place if they are not enforced. But another solution is to give the government more and more and more enforcement power which will, eventually, be used against the people instead of for them. Just as bad is all these enforcement people have to continually justify their pay so the bar for what constitutes an infraction starts dropping in order to keep the prosecution rates up.

Yeah, there’s nothing more objectionable than a law that is not seriously enforced. It need not be perfectly enforced (what law is?), but anything that doesn’t come with real teeth should just be repealed, regardless of the merits

You cannot talk about absurd absasing laws and fixate about enforcement. It is excusing satanism. It is diverting attention. It is "if dystopia is to happen, it would be defensible that it be done seriously".

That depends on the purpose of the individual law. Laws against murder must be enforced as much as possible, but the war on drugs has done a lot of unnecessary damage through excessive enforcement - drugs being illegal would still reduce drug use if that was only lightly enforced. The law is not like a segmentation fault.

Maybe I'm misreading their point...but I'd think that OP was being intellectually consistent and saying that the drug laws should be enforced as written for everyone, or repealed and replaced by more sane laws... because of you were to enforce them as written, you'd have 20-30% (wild ass guess) of the country serving prison time.

Yes, laws should be repealed if they’re bad. And I think strict enforcement makes it clearer when laws are bad. I would much rather everyone get the same treatment by the criminal justice system every time they violate the law, so everyone knows the true cost of the law, not just those that are unlucky

What if everyone gets the same treatment but the treatment is a wrist slap instead of 20 years in jail?

If that fulfills the purpose of the law then that’s a better law. Turning the law into a lottery where 1/100k “criminals” is severely punished for a common behavior is not the answer.

As a citizen I should be able to read the law and understand that violations have a likely and proportional consequence. This requires sensible laws. I shouldn’t need to play a guessing game (or consult a lawyer) about which laws are “real” for the average person and which can be ignored.

Alternatively, if the problem with a behavior is that it might bother someone (noise complaints etc), set up a better/more accessible channel for civil disputes. Not everything needs to be a crime.

That is the law. It's not a life sentence for using social media as a child. You say it doesn't need to be a crime, but perhaps you've not been made aware that it already isn't a crime?

This was in a minor subthread about drug laws, so I was responding to that.

That’s strict enforcement of a weak punishment. I am entirely in favor of that.

> there’s nothing more objectionable than a law that

Wrong laws? Unacceptable laws? Ignorant laws? Absurd laws? Satanic laws?

Unbelievable.

(Edit: sorry, replied twice out of a mistake. I cannot consolidate with the previous reply, which cannot now be edited or deleted.)

Should young people be surveilled to ensure they don't smoke weed, or is it okay if smoking weed is illegal but some of them do it anyway and hide it?

It sounds like maybe the problem is that the law is targeting the wrong people. I don’t think any kids should be arrested for smoking weed. If you want penalties for those who supplied it to them, that would make more sense if it’s considered harmful.

If a kid has a substance use problem, that’s a medical/psychological issue, not a criminal issue.

There shouldn't be a law dictating how old one must be to smoke weed. That's a parenting decision.

Smoking, drinking, watching adult films. Arguing that adding another to think list leads to "everything" is rather a stretch

Reply on news.ycombinator.com